← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Beauty and horror in South Sudan
00:28:09
Beauty and brutality coexist after a battle in South Sudan: a bullet whistles over the...
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This is a download from the BBC.
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It's from our own correspondent.
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We make one version of the program
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for the BBC World Service, but this is the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ad. Hello. Today, beauty and horror side by side in the aftermath of a battle in South Sudan. Are you sure this place is safe? The perils of a night out in one of Colombia's most troubled regions. There's a walk through rural Bosnia on the trail of the man who changed the world with a single bullet. And as Canada's long winter finally ends, it's time to head for the woods for some maple syrup. And big bucks are at stake as old squares up to new in the scrap over SAP. A deal has been signed to stop the bitter conflict in South Sudan. The war in the world's newest nation started in December, pitting government forces against rebels. There's been relatively little international attention to the conflict, despite accusations of widespread war crimes and the targeting of civilians because of their ethnicity. A million people have been forced to leave their homes. A previous ceasefire in January was violated within days. And the mediator for the new peace deal expressed only guarded optimism that this one would stop the fighting. Alastair Leithhead has been in the town of Benthew where one of the most recent battles took place, leaving scenes of horrific violence and brutality.
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The fast flying, swooping birds, a blur of bright red and translucent blue, took me by surprise. Not just because they were right there in front of me, but because their beauty was the last thing I expected in a place that seen such horror. They were bee eaters, darting around just outside the converted shipping container, which is my temporary air conditioned home on the United nations base on the outskirts of Bentiu. Their beaks were open and they were feasting on the flying insects which had emerged in that mosquito time just before dusk. The rainy season in South Sudan is a time of plenty for birds, if not people. In between the containers, the UN staff keep little vegetable plots. Drop a seed and it'll grow. They say the soil is good and the rain plentiful, but the fields and villages around are largely empty now. Bentiu is one of those places in South Sudan which has been fiercely fought over by rebels and government troops. The other day I looked on as a long column of foot soldiers led by three armored cars and four by fours armed for war appeared outside the base. The government was going into Bentu again to take back the town they'd lost two weeks earlier. They were using the shield of the UN compound to regroup for the assault. We had been into town the day before, met the rebel commander and then been driven under armed UN escort to the market, which was surprisingly busy. Fattened pigs wandered through the looted, shot up town. We stopped at the mosque. Our rebel escorts were nervous as we walked inside. Dozens of people had been massacred here. When the rebels arrived, the smell was appalling. The bloodied clothes and blankets of those killed were still scattered inside, but at least the bodies had gone for two weeks. Many of the hundreds killed had been left to rot in the burning sun. Fighting season for the pigs is a time of plenty. Back at the camp, I'd met a woman from Sudan who'd been in the mosque when the soldiers opened fire. Her sister had been shot many times. As she dragged her out to get help, a rebel soldier calmly killed her with a single bullet to the head. She watched two men being raped before they were killed. Much of the violence here is tribal. Another woman, the pregnant wife of a Dinka government soldier, told me she'd been caught by newer rebels. She'd been beaten and then raped by both of them. They said they wanted to destroy her Dinka baby. In this tribal cycle of revenge, newer civilians have also been killed in huge numbers. The little group of banded mongooses who live under the containers stood upright like meerkats, listening, noses twitching. They suddenly screamed at each other and in panic fled back to their holes. A few seconds later, we realized why. Like a monsoon shower, it started with a few drops, a few shots, a burst of gunfire here and there. Then the heavens opened. From a UN guard post, I heard the continuous roar of machine gun fire and heavy weapons. There were plumes of smoke, explosions. The roar of rockets. The hammering of bullets sounded like droplets of heavy rain on a tin roof. We were nervous of crossfire. There are 25,000 people being protected in this camp, surviving off dwindling aid supplies and little water. But there's no shelter from falling metal. I heard a high pitched whine, the sound a bullet makes flying above your head. But it was a bird. And then lots of them. Maybe their species had grown used to gunfire. I focused my hearing on them as the hammering chorus continued and intensified. The sound of ever closer bullets, eventually drowning out the birdsong. Finally, when the battle came to an end, the camp dogs emerged from their hiding places. Like the pigs in the weeks before, the dogs have eaten human flesh. Inside the camp, the barrage had claimed just one victim, a four year old girl. She'd been hit by a stray bullet as she cowered With a dozen other children in a makeshift shelter, it took a long time to dig her grave in the heavy clay soil. Men with picks and shovels worked in the heat of the day to ensure her resting place was deep enough. And later, as the sun went down over the camp, Marabou, storks like wise old men appeared perching on lamp posts as they prepared to settle down for the night. They've seen many graves dug here and will no doubt see many more in a place where people are more used to war than peace.
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Alistair Leithhead in South Sudan, pro Russian activists in eastern Ukraine have decided to go ahead tomorrow with a referendum on autonomy, which the Ukrainian government in Kiev has said is illegal. They've also ignored a request by Vladimir Putin to postpone the vote. The Russian president commemorated his country's victory in World War II with a visit yesterday to the breakaway region of Crimea in a move which the US described as provocative on the ground. In eastern Ukraine, there have been more deadly clashes as government forces engage the militias who've taken over official buildings. Fergal Keen had a close encounter with the violence in the eastern town of Slovyansk, where pro Russian forces are in control.
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Of all the accoutrements of war, there's none I find quite so intimidating as the balaclava. I've faced it in many places, and this last week in eastern Ukraine, the men in masks were lurking, strutting, skulking, flexing, all the different variations of movement known to aficionados of checkpoint etiquette. There was the checkpoint about 40 minutes from Donetsk, where the main man in the mask there's usually a main man, was an elderly and overweight farmer cradling an ancient looking shotgun. Behind him was a blockade made of tires, wood and a few sandbags, on which were placed the flag of the Soviet Union, the Russian flag, the orange and black ribbons of the rebellion, and a portrait of Nicholas Romanov, last Tsar of Russia. These symbols, some profoundly contradictory, reflect the diverse collection of allegiances of which the rebel struggle in eastern Ukraine is composed. This was a friendly checkpoint. What was happening in Donetsk? We were asked. All quiet, our driver replied, and we were waved through. How much of my life has been spent suspended in limbo at checkpoints, dependent on the capricious sensibilities of men with guns? A little further up the road, the reception was less friendly. These were local toughs suddenly made powerful by the weapons they cradled and the total absence of any law save the one they made themselves. When civil order breaks down, the excluded and the despised will Find in the upturned universe an unaccustomed place in the sun. Everybody out. Said one particularly lumpen fellow. He had fists like Christmas hams and grabbed at our passports and press passes. I had the great good fortune to be traveling with the colleague who, although he had little experience of war, had a natural instinct for calming tense situations and fluent Russian. With patience, he explained why it wouldn't be a good idea for the gunmen to steal our flak jackets and helmets. How could we tell the story of what's happening here? How could we report what you think to the world if you take our equipment? He said. After 20 minutes, we were given the magic wave to leave. Colleagues who turned up just before us weren't so lucky. They were robbed, driven away at gunpoint, interrogated and faced the possibility of kidnap until somebody farther up the very loose chain of command heard about their plight and ordered them released. At the far end of our journey was Slovyansk, scene of the main fighting between the rebels and the Ukrainian army. We arrived during a lull. We drove along empty streets, never a comforting sight in a city of 125,000 people in the middle of a working day. But we couldn't see any checkpoints in the center of town. The gunmen appeared to have melted out of sight. So we started to record the reality of what we found. We were filming the deserted streets through the car window when suddenly we happened on a sandbagged defensive position. Everything happened in a matter of seconds. A voice shouted angrily. We put away the camera. Our driver was turning left and there was another shout from behind. And we were shouting, stop. Stop. To the driver. Then, from directly behind, there was a loud bang, a shot whistling over the car. The driver stopped. Voices were now shouting directly behind us. It was then that our security adviser, an ex soldier, one of those men who work with camera crews in conflict, very calmly told us to wait. And he got out of the car on his own, with his hands in the air. He called out in English that we were no threat. Everybody out. He then called to the rest of us. At this point, none of us in the car had any idea what was waiting outside. So we got out, hands up. I looked and saw two gunmen crouched a few yards away. Both had their weapons pointing at us. One was very nervous, his hands shaking. They both shouted in Russian. Our security man kept talking to them, and my Russian speaking colleague translated. We were press, we weren't a threat. Could we please speak to their commander? Suddenly a man was jumping over the sandbags. He wasn't masked, and he had the confidence of a trained soldier. There followed a negotiation that seemed to last an hour, but I know only took several minutes. The gunmen were called back and we were allowed to go. I thanked my two colleagues. I couldn't thank them enough. On the way back to Donetsk, we were all quiet, each of us aware of how slender is the thread by which life can hang in a place where there are frightened men with guns. East Ukraine is full of them now,
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and that's Fergal Keen. Canadians have been celebrating the end of a long, hard winter. It broke records all over the country. Toronto hasn't seen a winter like it in decades. The Mercury dropped below minus 20 centigrade on 10 different occasions. Winnipeg saw some of the coldest weather in 75 years. The snow was deep and the talk was of polar vortex wind chills. The change in season traditionally sees Canadians heading out into the forest in search of maple syrup. This year, as Lorraine Mallander has been finding out, they found a business in turmoil. The traditional ways of doing things challenged by new technology.
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It's a vision of perfect Canadiana. I'm walking in thick fog through a maple forest. There's still snow on the ground, but the thaw has set in and sugary SAP is rising up through the trees, dripping into tin buckets attached to each trunk. I make my way to the log cabin up ahead. Inside, standing by a roaring fire, there's Pierre Fauchet, a man mountain type with a big white beard and a red lumberjack's shirt. He even gives a ho ho ho when I see him, eyes fixing me with amused interest. Faucher is the owner of what Canadians call a sugar shack where maple syrup is produced. It's traditional here during the spring to get yourself down to the nearest shack to gorge on high calorie artery clogging fare. Think meatballs, sausages, beans, pies, beans, bacon, all slathered in maple syrup. It's like a reward for getting through the harsh winter. Glass of maple wine in hand, I'm enjoying the sepia tinged folksy moment. Isn't this what it's all about? The folklore, the dizzying whirl of fiddle music in the background and the drip, drip, drip of maple SAP into tin buckets. Not exactly in this most symbolic of Canadian industries, times are changing fast. Today maple syrup is a multi billion dollar industry. Forget the buckets. Most farms these days have their trees hooked up to miles of tubing, vacuum pumping the SAP to tanks. And with today's wireless monitoring systems, you can check progress without having to get your feet soggy in the bush. Not Faucher, though. He's one of just a few farmers who still produce their syrup the old fashioned way. At the first signs of spring, he and his four men trudge through 120 acres of maple forest, waiting for that perfect moment when nighttime freeze and daytime thaw conspire to get the SAP moving through the trees to tap the trunks and hang the buckets. It's a laborious and time consuming craft. Isn't he tempted to modernise? He harrumphs. Hmm. The guy who wakes up in the morning and works from the kitchen table. He doesn't see the ice sparkle, doesn't see the first flower, doesn't smell the ground defrosting. It's about how much the trees are going to produce, how much money he's going to make. Canadians got a sense of the value of the sweet stuff after $18 million worth of syrup, enough to fill 150 tractor trail, was stolen from warehouses in Quebec. The Quebec syrup producers, accounting for about three quarters of the global market, are united in a powerful legal cartel comparable to opec. This is a hard nosed competitive industry. I speak to Christian Reich, owner of a high tech farm north of Montreal. All it takes is a glance at his smartphone to tell how much SAP has been pumped. He can even tell if squirrels, the bane of the maple farmer's life, have been gnawing at the trees tubing. It seems clear from what he's saying that any farm serious about production has to keep up with the times. We wouldn't be able to provide the whole world with maple syrup just using buckets, he says. Back on Faucher's farm, I enter the heart of the Sugar Shack experience, where SAP is boiled down to syrup on a gigantic wood burning stove. Pierre Rozon, a young man in a baseball cap, is on duty ladling the bubbling SAP with a pan to check its consist. Only when it's reached just over 209 degrees Fahrenheit, its gloopy flow breaking as it falls from the pan. Does it become syrup? Occasionally he drags a length of fatty bacon round through the mix. For flavour? I ask, puzzled. No, the fat stops it bubbling over. He says. He's been doing this since he was a little boy. In this very Sugar Shack, Foshee has a go at stirring another pan of syrup for taffy, a thicker concoction that is poured directly onto the snow and tw around a stick to make a sort of lollipop. Ah, if I had the chance, I'd spend all my time in the shack boiling the SAP, he says wistfully. Faucher's farm exists in its own little time warp. There's something of the rugged individualist about him. Like the pioneers who first settled the land in the 17th century, he's one of the last maple farmers in the country to preserve this dying craft. And somehow, it seems his syrup tastes all, all the sweeter for it.
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Lorraine Mallender there, enjoying the maple syrup at the end of a long, hard Canadian winter. Peace talks aimed at ending Colombia's long running insurgency are continuing in the Cuban capital, Havana. The latest communique suggests the Colombian government and the country's main rebel group, the farc, are close to agreeing a strategy on countering drug cultivation and trafficking. But Frank Gardner says that even if a deal is reached, the country's southern coca growing provinces are likely to remain troubled by violence for years to come.
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Over potholed, muddy roads, we bumped and splashed our way from the airfield to the military base. At intervals along the way, Colombian marines stood guard beneath the vast spreading mango trees, their regulation issue capes glistening with rainwater, their fingers resting on the triggers of their assault rifles. This was Putamayu Province, right in the heart of South America's coca growing region. It's a place where Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil all try to interrupt the flow of drugs, guns, rebels and hostages with varying degrees of success. Bizarrely, the Colombian navy is in charge here. I say bizarrely because the port of Puerto Liguismo is nowhere near the ocean. It's 800 miles inland from the Pacific, but the port sits on the Rio Putumayo, which forms Colombia's huge natural southern border with its neighbors. Its brown, sluggish waters run into the Amazon downstream. Sitting on the Colombian riverbank, I could clearly see the palm thatch huts and well tended gardens of Peruvian families on the opposite bank, dwarfed by the jungle that towered over them like an overbearing parent. Your quarters, announced our Colombian naval escort, showing me into a small room with a mosquito net thoughtfully draped over the bed. Outside, it began to rain once more. They get a lot of it here. We sat in what equated to the officers mess, where a beautifully polished wooden ship's wheel bore the inscription glasgow. Up on the wall was a baffling painting which quite put us off our food. It depicted a naked Amazonian mother and child deep in the jungle, with some kind of large rodent breast feeding from her. I think it was probably a capybara, but whatever it was, we had to sit with our backs to it from then on. We had come to see the Colombian navy's new toys, a pair of British made combat hovercraft recently shipped in from Southampton. These, said the commander, would make all the difference to their operations, allowing their marines to pursue the insurgents and drug traffickers right through the dry season instead of finding their boats running aground on sandbanks. What about the town Puerto Luguissimo? I asked. Is it safe to visit? Si, answered the naval officers, adding with a note of expectation, perhaps the signor would like to visit it tonight. It transpired that the whole base had had their leave canceled because of an imminent national farmers strike, but here was a perfect excuse to break the ban. The visiting British journalist needed to see the town. It was important for his report, you understand. So off we went through darkened streets, jolting along in a minibus, a naval rating at the wheel, two officers, a pilot and an intelligence officer behind me. They looked convincingly unmilitary, dressed in T shirts, shorts, and gold medallions. The intelligence officer was the only one who knew his way around town. The others were all just visiting from the capital, Bogota. I noticed that in camp he was the only one not in uniform, and his hair was long and scruffy. Painstakingly, over several months, he'd been building up a picture of where the rebels strengths and weaknesses were, who were their contacts in town, which routes through the jungle were they using to bring in guns and explosives from Ecuador. He had also, I learned, been cultivating sauces amongst rebel fighters who had recently laid down their arms, gleaning what he could about morale and equipment in their fast diminishing ranks. In a steep cobbled back street, we sat up at a bar where salsa music poured out to a deck of empty tables. Where is everyone? I asked. It's early, they replied. It's only nine o'.
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Clock.
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You should see this place. At two in the morning a waitress came over in tight jeans and low cut top, bearing drinks. The men fell silent, as if we'd been discussing matters of national security instead of actually swapping crude jokes. So I turned to them when she was gone, sashaying back to her perch on a bar stool. In such a dangerous province, how can you be sure this place is safe? They turned as one to look at the intelligence officer. We've already checked it out, he replied. From the moment you said you wanted to visit the town, our people scoped this place in advance. I wasn't sure how I felt about this rather Orwellian procedure, but I had another question. Ok, well, what about that young guy over there on the other side of the street. He's been watching us ever since we got here. How do you know he's not a scout for the FARC rebels? They laughed. Because he works for us, they replied, and emptied their glasses. Come on, they said. On to the next place.
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Frank Gardner out on the town in Columbia last night, the old City hall in Sarajevo was reopened, fully restored. I watched on a morning in 1992 as it was wrecked by fire in the Bosnian war. Almost 100 years ago, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria attended a reception there. He waved to the crowds as he got into his car and was assassinated a couple of minutes later by a Serbian student, Gavrilo Principe, so precipitating World War I. Tim Butcher also covered the Bosnian war, and he's been back to discover more about Princip.
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They say a butterfly's wings can set off a tornado, impact global weather, even change the world. This thought came to me as I explored an abandoned Balkan homestead. I was in a time worn hamlet, some of the outbuildings battered by the years, some by conflict, a community founded in the lee of a humpback hill offering protection from winter winds. To the south oozed pasture land, a plain surfboard flat, and picketed all around by high mountains. Somewhere over the peaks lay the Mediterranean cities, highways, and the broadband rush of the 21st century. But the village I was in belonged to a past world order. The plot I sought took a little finding. There was no signposter, a surprise, perhaps, given who was born there. It was a cloudless midsummer day, making me glad as I explored for the shade from trees planted by villagers long dead. Some of them lie today in a graveyard, which sits on a nearby slope, tilted gently towards the setting sun. Many of the headstones belong to those who lived out hard lives of farming toil. But look carefully and you see clusters of dying some in the 1940s, again in the 1990s. It was the ornate fence that gave it away, the mere fact it had one. No other property was similarly flattered, although those who had erected the railings 50 years ago might not recognize them now. The iron was rusty, a foundation wall chipped, and entrance gate missing. The original farmhouse had never been much more than a hovel, and now it was mostly gone, the only structural echo a roofless stone walled chamber set into the hillside, a stable ones for livestock. The owners had lived on top, in a plain dwelling of coarsely plastered walls, capped by one of the steeply pitched roofs that were once characteristic of the western Balkans. I'd seen pictures of the original homestead, but like so much connected to its infamous son, others had sought it destroyed. For me, this was quite some moment, arriving at a starting point I'd been dwelling on for roughly 20 years. The hamlet is so small it does not register on many maps, but research had led me to the Royal Geographical Society's archive in London, where I'd made a breakthrough. There I found an old but detailed military map marking the village accurately on the inland flank of the Dinaric Alps, the range that caps the top of the Balkan Peninsula. Dated 1937, the map faithfully captured all relevant cartographic features the contours of the sheltering hillock, the sweep of the plain, the massing of the mountains. But it also hinted at something else a turbulent history. Originally printed with army markings from the defunct royalist Yugoslav government, the map also bore a 1941 swastika stamp from Nazi Germany, overlaid by British military hieroglyphs from the 1950s. This was a place well fought over Summer weeds grew tall inside the ruined basement, Sprouting through rain smoothed heaps of collapsed masonry. At first sight, there appeared nothing to indicate this place carried any significance at all. But then I spotted the wreaths, three of them, long since past their prime, leaves all withered, propped against the wall. Only the tops reached out from the undergrowth, so I had to stamp away nettles and bend down to look properly. There were no cards, but for me, they still bore a clear meaning Someone, somewhere, wanted to remember. By now, my arrival had been noticed by an elderly man who emerged from next door, as I find common in Bosnia. He was at once suspicious, yet welcoming, unable to help himself from helping. After I'd introduced myself and explained my interest in the child born here in 1894, he offered to show me a hidden relic connected directly to my quarry. I was delighted, following him up the garden's gentle slope to the dry stone wall at the back. Most of the rocks wore a pelt of green moss, but the face of one was bare. The old man knelt next to it. He was only a schoolboy when he left his mark in a Where is it now? He was mumbling to himself. He came back here on holiday and he chipped something into the rock. It have taken some time, and while he was doing it, one of his friends came up and spoke to him. The friend asked why he was doing it, and he replied, because one day people will know my name. The old man rocked back. He'd found what he was looking for, and I could see his fingers tracing out a date, 1909. And two letters about three inches high. It took a second to recalibrate to the Cyrillic script they were written in, but then I could read them clearly enough.
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G.P.
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the initials of Gavrilo Princip, the man who fired not just the opening shots of the First World War, but the starting gun for modern history. As I stood up, a butterfly, powder blue as the Balkan summer sky flapped by.
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Timbucha finding history etched in the Bosnian countryside and bringing this edition to a close. And that's it. More tales from around the world next Saturday morning. Do join us. Goodbye.